Warning: More gore in this chapter. Nothing graphic – just disturbing. I felt cruel writing this.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or any related characters.
Chapter 10: Keen ( / kēn / ) – History revealed.
1. adj - having a fine, sharp cutting edge or point
2. adj - marked by intellectual quickness and acuity
3. adj - intense; piercing
4. noun - a loud, wailing lament for the dead
A cloak of silence enveloped the ruins of Ishval. It moved thickly through the streets, absorbing all sound, softly flowing over moonlit rubble. It sunk into the stones, forming a soft void where bustling feet once tread. The pavement absorbed the sound – devoured it. Just as it drank the blood of Ishvalan innocents a decade before. The walls held their own kind of quiet as well. They refused to reverberate as a girl staggered through the darkness.
Ashika tottered amongst the rubble, intoxicated by the righteousness of her own violence. Hatred realized: fulfilling and pitiless. She had waited so long for this. It all seemed a wonderful, brutal dream. Yet blood dripped quietly from the edge of her knife, each stain evidence of her accomplishments. This was only the beginning. She had so much more to do.
The array burned in the pocket of her robe. She never expected to find such a gift, but he knew just what to do with it. Ashika silently prayed that Mustang would be the one to find his beloved Captain. It was only fitting. It was only just.
Her mind buzzed. Thing were moving so quickly.
She heard a soft shuffling nearby, like the sound of a wild animal, caught. She knew it well.
"Devon," she called into the night. "Where are you, my brother?" She stood at the edge of a large plaza. Avenues congested with fallen rubble led off from the square in every direction. At one time it might have been a lively market where merchants sold their wares. Now it was taken by silence, choked by dust. A giant fountain stood dry and relatively untouched at its center.
She heard the sound again, just behind the empty pool. A lanky ruin of a boy scrabbled from around fountain's wide-mouthed edge. His bloodred eyes skittered over Ashika. They were wary: the eyes of an animal. He bounced from foot to bare foot, hands fluttering restlessly at his sides.
"Come," Ashika said in the low timbre she reserved only for him. "Come, Devon." She held a hand to her brother. She noted disinterestedly that the Captain's blood still stained her fingers. Her blackened hand seemed to absorb the soft moonlight. "Come."
The Ishvanan boy shook his head, his eyes wide and confused. The tangled mass of hair that spilled down his back softly swept over each shoulder. He took a step back.
She did not have time for this. Not tonight. "Devon, come."
The boy cooed a wordless reply and a watery smile spread over his lips. With a garbled cry, he leapt over the edge of the fountain and into the dusty bowl. The sight of it pulled at Ashika's memory. She had seen this before. She looked on as her brother let out a screeching whoop, his bare arms spread in an unspoken entreaty to the luminous moon.
And suddenly, Ashika knew where she was. She knew this place. And she knew that she could not stay here. Not without…
Agne, a voice breathed. It seemed to come from just behind her shoulder.
"No," Ashika said, shaking her head. "Not now."
Devon keened a stream of jibberish, leaping and shuffling through the dust that lined the pool in frozen waves. He reached down and lifted the sand with cupped hands, spilling it over his head as a parched man would indulge in a face full of water. Ashika looked on, frozen by the memory of it.
Agne. The voice was achingly familiar. Her constant plague and burden all these years.
"No," she moaned as a wave of memory crashed over her, threatening to unseat her from reality.
Agne, a voice called from long ago. Where are you, my love?
Ashika cried out as a stab of pain laced through her skull. "No… stay out. Go away." Spots flashed bright behind her eyes.
"Agne! Agne, where are you?"
"Here, mama." Agne clambered over the short wall that separated the market from the tapestry district.
Mother sighed in relief. "There you are, my love." She held out her free arm to her child. The other firmly braced a basket of groceries against her hip. "What were you doing over there?"
"I was looking at the Xingese traders." Agne skipped to her mother, love in her crimson eyes.
Mother was a rare beauty – a flower amongst her people. It was her hair. She had lovely hair. While most Ishvalans wore shades of white, grey, or brown, Mother's shone a pale gold. Agne's father often joked that perhaps she was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Amestrian. But her quiet nature and true-red eyes were proof enough: Mother was an Ishvalan, through and through.
"Where is your brother?" Mother asked, running an affectionate hand over Agne's downy mane – a disappointingly drab shade of grey.
"He's in the fountain," Agne said, pointing to where the four-year-old brother splashed in the shallow pool.
"Oh no," Mother chuckled. "Again?"
"No," Ashika moaned. "Stop." The knife fell from her numb fingers as another needle of pain pierced the space between her eyes.
Devon continued to play in the sandy fountain, oblivious to his sister's distress. In his own divergent world, she often did not exist.
Ashika sunk to her knees, burdened by the weight of her own memory.
The Ishval War was terrible. It changed everything. Even as a child she knew this.
For Agne, the fighting meant she no longer played in the street with her brother. It meant hours huddled with her family in a secret bunker, hidden below the earthen floor of their home. It meant an empty belly and sleepless nights.
She learned the meaning of permanence: the grave finality of death. The lesson was forced upon her. Again and again and again. The first was her uncle, a fierce warrior-monk with a kind face. Mother begged him not to leave. She demanded he stay with his family to protect them. But her pleas fell on deaf ears. Agne would never forget the way the tears wetted Mother's gilded hair as he quietly walked to war.
Soon Agne's uncle was dead: shot through the throat by a nameless Amestrian soldier. His comrades said he died valiantly, fighting to the very end. It was of little comfort. Not when he was one of so many others. Countless others. Their desperate prayers to Ishvala went unanswered. Life became an endless string of tragedy and loss.
Over time mother grew weary and thin. Her hands trembled and her posture drooped. She no longer laughed or smiled. Agne and her brother looked on, powerless, as the light in her crimson eyes slowly dwindled. Yet her hair remained beautiful – shining and gold. They clung to that. At times, it was all they had.
The loss of Agne's father dealt the final blow to Mother's waning vitality. Father was not even afforded the dignity of a warrior's death. Instead, his passing was slow and agonizing. The Braak flu did not discriminate; it affected Ishvalan and Amestrian alike. But without medical supplies, food, or clean water, the illness quietly reaped though the Ishvalan encampment. It took the life of Agne's father over five long days filled with retching, fevers, and parched lips.
Mother barely responded when Agne told her that Father was dead. She simply let out a single, heart wrenching keen, her face utterly expressionless. Agne watched helplessly as the light in her mother's eyes flickered and doused. Mother was still alive, but dead to the world: Only stirring when roused, only eating when fed. And thus she left Agne and Devon – so young and horribly alone – in an empty house seized by war and filled with corpses.
"No," Ashika whispered. "Please. I don't… I don't want to…" Pain like icy stakes stabbed into her brow. She pressed her palms against it, moaning in agony.
Devon crouched low before her, his red eyes curious and unaware. His feet were frosted in a pebbly coating of sand. He reached forward to stroke his sister's scarred, hairless head as he muttered a string of comforting gibberish.
"I don't want to… remember," she gasped.
"Clear every building," clipped a voice outside. "I want no survivors."
"But sir…"
Agne and Devon huddled together near the hearth. Their tiny, war-starved bodies shook with fear. The last line of Ishvalan defense broke nearly an hour ago. Amestrian soldiers poured into the emptying streets. It quickly became clear their orders were to shoot on sight. In a selfish act of survival, their Ishvalan neighbors fled, leaving the two children to fend for themselves. Agne and Devon would not have left anyway. Mother could not manage more than a shuffling walk. She would never survive the violence in the streets, and they could not leave her here to die alone. And so Agne and Devon clutched one another for comfort as their mother sat in a stupor nearby.
"Enough arguing, Flame. You have your orders. I expect results."
"Agne," Devon whispered, his tiny voice trembling. "I'm scared."
Agne shushed him and wrapped her arms around his filthy back. She pulled him close to her chest and rested her cheek on his crown. He was so little and frail and so very terrified. Boot steps rang on the streets outside. They were heavy and slow, like a solemn death knell. Agne's heart fluttered with fear. After all these painful months, death had finally come for them. She fought against the tight, choking feeling in her throat.
At least they would be together in the end.
"Agne!" Devon's voice was filled with terror. The edge in his tone startled her from her reverie. Agne looked up. Her brother pointed to the door.
Mother stood there. Agne was not sure when or how she arrived; she had not even heard Mother rise from her chair. It was the first time she had done so on her own since Father died. Mother swayed on her atrophied legs, a faraway look in her eyes. The sound of footsteps and voices grew louder, now seeming to come from just outside the house. Agne could hear the tinny noise of metal on metal; her war-trained ears knew it as the sound of someone loading a gun.
"Mama!" Agne hissed. "Mama, come back!"
"Agne," Mother whispered, her voice cracked from disuse. Agne choked at the sound of it; it was the first time she heard her mother speak in months. She did not realize how much she missed it. "Agne, where are you, my love?" Mother's distant eyes trailed over her children. She did not see them. She did not know them. "Agne? Devon?" Mother's hand slowly rose to rest on the door leading outside.
No! It seemed as though her mother moved in slow motion. Her wasted hand gripped the handle and began to pull at the heavy door. Agne gasped as terror washed over her. She stumbled to her feet. Devon whimpered, clutching at his sister's ankles as her warmth and comfort left him.
Agne dared a muted shout. "Mama! Please!" She stepped forward.
What followed would forever be branded into her memory. A dazzling beam of sunlight streamed through the widening doorway. The light glinted off Mother's lovely hair, shining more brilliantly than the purest of gold. Agne froze at the sight of it. For a moment she could only gaze dumbly at the first beautiful thing she had seen in months.
Then an alarming cacophony spilled through the doorway: Voices edged with cruelty and fear.
"You there!"
"Stand down! Hands on your head!"
"What are you waiting for, Flame?"
"Stand down!"
"Just – just wait! She's unarmed!"
"Don't move! Don't move or we'll shoot!"
"On the ground!"
"Do it, Flame! Now!"
Mother's eyes slowly rose to the soldiers outside. She did not see them. "Agne?" She stretched out her arms as though to catch a tumbling child. The shouts outside intensified, taking on a spooked, frenzied tone. They told her not to move. They told her to get down. They told her things her war-sickened mind would not – could not – comprehend.
Everything seemed to happen at once. Mother lumbered forward, her arms open to the soldiers waiting on the streets below. Agne screamed and stumbled towards the door. She tripped and fell against her mother's side. Through the corner of her vision, Agne could see an indistinct blue shape. She turned her head. A man stood just outside, one gloved hand held aloft before him. Agne cried out again as she caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were hard and black and cruel. There was no mercy in them. There was no humanity. But his eyes widened slightly as the young girl appeared in the doorway. His fingers jerked in surprise.
They made a tiny 'snick.'
It burned. It burned. Ishvala take her, it burned.
Agne shrieked as the flames enveloped her. Shouts sounded from the soldiers outside, and their forms blurred in a flurry of movement. Agne thrashed in a vain attempt to escape the merciless inferno. Her fire-stung eyes swung up to her mother. She stood utterly still, arms open. Her beautiful hair was aflame; the burnished gold now transformed to fiery red.
Their eyes met. Mother's were suddenly aware. "Agne," she murmured. Her soft voice cut through the roar of the flames. She reached out and wrapped her blazing arms around her daughter's thrashing body in one last mother's embrace.
Agne remembered little of what followed. She could recall only brief flashes – like pictures, wreathed in fire: Devon's too-wide eyes as he watched his sister and mother writhe like living torches... A thick, tan cloth as it enveloped Agne, damping the fire... Mother's blistered lips as she released a final, rattling breath.
And she remembered him: The man that burned her. She remembered his dark, cold eyes.
Then she knew no more.
When she awoke, it was to a world filled with pain. Her face, her arms, her body: They all screamed in unending agony. Every nerve lay exposed to the dry desert air. It stung so horribly. Agne looked up to see a woman with blue eyes and blonde hair. An Amestrian! She tried to cry out – tried to move – but only managed a weak, throaty croak.
"Shh, my little one," the woman soothed. "Don't move. I know it hurts. I know." Her motherly tone… it tore at Agne's heart.
Tears welled in her lidless eyes. They dribbled down her cheeks, searing a path over the angry flesh. She saw a small flicker in the corner of her vision. She turned her head toward it; the movement tugged uncomfortably at her ruined skin. Devon hunched on a pallet nearby, his thin arms wrapped tightly around his legs. By some miracle, her brother was alive and seemingly unharmed. He rocked back and forth in silence and his large red eyes stared without blinking.
Agne sighed and sank back into peaceful oblivion.
Days of painful dressing changes and fitful sleep followed. She lost sense of time and place. Infection took hold of her and she burned with fever. She did not know for how long. Agne's crowded world only had room for the unending pain and the memory of her mother's voice. She had terrible dreams filled with coal-black eyes and raging fires. After many days (weeks? months?) Agne's fever broke and she grew strong enough to sit up. She realized she was in a makeshift hospital, run by a pair of Amestrian doctors.
Through it all, Devon never spoke. He simply rocked and stared. His mind retreated to a faraway place where there was no fear or pain. Devon had become like Mother: awake but not aware, alive but not living.
Agne was not fully recovered when the Ishvalan man attacked. Medics had brought him to the hospital the day before, unconcious. His face was rent down the center by a horrible burn. They were running low on supplies; there were no more analgesics or sedatives to spare. The man cried out in confusion, calling for his brother. Agne rose weakly from her pallet and watched the man struggle to rise. Devon moved to her side without a word. Pain-crazed and disoriented, the Ishvalan warrior-monk killed the kind Amestrian doctors. Agne, Devon, and the other patients scattered as the man destroyed the medical tent in an insane, righteous fury.
Agne fled into the abandoned city, her brother's hand clutched in hers. Stained bandages streamed like banners from her body. The sounds of gunshots rang distant over the desert sands. They ran together – as far and as fast as they could. Agne refused to rest in spite of her broken body and aching chest. She had to find safety. She would not lose Devon. Not now. They ran until their lungs were spent and their legs numb. Then they ran more.
They slowed when they reached the outskirts . The land there was oddly sloped; the ground sounded hollow beneath their pounding feet. They found the sinkhole soon after; a narrow cave led deep underground and then – mercifully – they heard the sound of trickling water.
They survived there together, hidden beneath the streets of Ishval. The water was clean and sometimes – if they were lucky – they found an occasional fish. Agne soon discovered which insects staved hunger and which left them with a bellyache. Over weeks, the fighting slackened. The sound of gunfire ebbed. And, after two long weeks of relative peace, the Amestrian soldiers left in their motor cars and wagons. They abandoned the few Ishvalans that remained scattered and hungry in the ruined city. Agne quickly learned how to protect her brother from the wild, half-starved children left to die in the rubble.
Months passed. Perhaps years. It was difficult to tell in the unchanging desert. Agne and Devon never grew; their bodies remained childlike and small. Soon, Agne only remembered the sound of desert winds and the whispered memory of her mother's voice.
Agne was foraging for desert roots when she ran across the group of Xingese traders. At first she though it was a mirage; it had been ages since she saw another human besides her brother or the other Lost Children. They were mounted on camels and dressed in silks. Wide-brimmed hats shaded their faces from the beating sun. One of them – a woman – guided her camel forward. She had black hair and dark sloe eyes. She said something in a language Agne did not understand.
The Ishvalan girl shook her head, shrinking away. Her eyes strayed to where Devon hid in the rubble nearby. He was out of sight.
The woman spoke again in a thick accent. "What are you doing here, child?"
Agne made to run, but a heavy hand fell on her shoulder. She looked up to see a Xingese man. His cold, slanted eyes brought forth memories of inescapable flames. She shrieked, uselessly batting her tiny fist against his chest. At the sound of her voice, Devon scrambled from his hiding place, his eyes wild and chest heaving.
The woman on the camel shouted a harsh command in Xingese. The man released her, and Agne stumbled away from him. Devon appeared at Agne's side, wordless and soundless as always. His hand found hers.
The woman regarded the siblings with her dark, wise eyes. "Are you two alone?"
Agne nodded.
"No parents?"
She shook her head.
"What is your name?"
Agne opened her mouth. No sound came out. It was months since she last spoke. She tried again. "Agne," she croaked.
The woman nodded. She looked at Devon. "And how are you called, boy?" Devon shrunk away, his too-wide eyes skittering with fear.
"He's Devon," Agne answered for him.
"He is mute?"
Agne nodded.
"You have been burned," the woman observed, as if she were talking about the weather or recent prices at the market. "I can sense the violence of war in you."
Agne did not know how to respond to this strange, perceptive woman. There was something soothing about her. The girl simply nodded, her hand wrapped securely around Devon's.
"I once had a child like you," the woman said sadly. She dismounted her camel and held out her hand. "My name is Jiao. Come."
Agne did not know why she trusted this woman. Perhaps she filled a void in her life; a place left empty when Mother died. She took the woman's hand.
"I will look after you now."
And so it was that she and her brother traveled across the endless desert sands under the guardianship of a kind stranger. They arrived in Xing a month later.
It was there that Agne learned of alkahestry.
Ashika. The name meant knife, blade, keen. She discovered it in an ancient alkahestry text. Ashika was a legend – a pioneer of her time. A woman that performed countless experiments to forward the understanding of how chi flows through the brain. Agne spent hours reading the tome, absorbing the astounding genius of Ashika's masterwork
Ashika's teachings whispered secrets to Agne's starved heart. Perhaps her brother's condition was not permanent. Perhaps she could heal him – draw him out from the quiet world he inhabited. He would not have to live docile as Mother had. And perhaps Agne could rid herself of the memory. Mother's voice still plagued her. She dreamed of it nearly every night. At times, it came to her during the day, unseating her from reality.
Agne spent countless nights in the library secretly paging through Ashika's book. Her fervent, desperate mind refused her rest. The crumbling pages held hope for both of them. Devon was the only person in this world she loved. Agne felt so hopelessly, desperately alone. She wanted to hear his voice. She wanted to stop hearing Mother's.
And perhaps, said a quiet whisper from a dark corner of her mind, perhaps you can find a way to destroy him.
Him.
Him.
The dark-eyed man for whom hate slowly quickened in her heart.
"Why are you not in bed?" Jiao snapped from somewhere over her shoulder. Agne jumped as her alkahestry teacher materialized from the shadows that stretched between bookcases. Jiao's eyes trailed down to the tome that lay open before her student. She gasped as she recognized the writings. "What is that?" She reached over the slight Ishvalan girl to slam the tome shut. "You should not be reading this," she hissed. "This is evil. A sin against alkahestry."
"But… Teacher – " Agne began, angry tears pricking her eyes.
"No, Agne," Jiao said. Her dark eyes flashed. "You are too eager. Your hunger to learn is too strong. Alkahestry is not meant for such things. Ashika had no mercy for others. Her teachings are wrong – twisted. I will not have my pupil reading such things."
Resentment rose in Agne, hot and unforgiving. "No, Teacher! This can be used for good. It could help Devon!"
"When I agreed to take you on as a student, you promised to respect and obey me," Jiao reminded her. "I took you and your brother into my home. I treat you as my own. Now, return to your room. You will not seek this knowledge again."
Agne slumped away, anger roiling through her. She was tired of Teacher holding her back. She worked so much harder than the other alkahestry students. She was more clever, more astute. She was better than them, and they knew it. Her classmates glared at her with hatred and jealousy as she proved – time and again – that she was their superior in every way. Agne grew to hate their dark, slanted eyes – so much like those of the man that scarred her. She hated the way their gaze lingered on her ruined face.
Agne remembered the first time she glimpsed her scars in one of Jiao's mirrors. She retched at the sight of the lidless, hairless monster that peered back at her. She was hideous. Barely even a girl. Jiao could do nothing to heal the mutilated flesh.
At least she had her alkahestry. It made her feel powerful.
Ashika.
Knife, blade, keen.
The name turned over and over in her mind. There had to be a way. A way to save Devon. A way to save herself. A way to destroy him. She returned to her studies with new fervor. Ashika's teachings were her guide. She no longer had access to her writings, but Agne remembered enough to begin experimenting. She caught mice in the field outside Jiao's home and manipulated the chi in their tiny brains. The work was exhausting, frustrating, and – at times – gruesome. On some days Agne's transmutations slipped. The little mouse in her hands would let out an alarming squeak, shudder, and die. At other times the results were more horrifying: the mouse's beady eyes would bleed or it would bite out its own tongue. On one occasion the rodent's head exploded. Agne did not transmute for days afterwards.
But she carried on. She would be as hard as a blade, her mind as keen as a knife. She would be like Ashika. For Devon. For her. For him.
Jiao took note of her student's darkening heart. At times, the Xingese woman refused to answer Agne's probing questions. "I worry about you," Jiao said. "I do not like what I sense in you. Take care Agne. Take care." On some days, Agne caught her teacher regarding her with dark, knowing eyes. They seemed to pierce her through, unfurling her secrets, and Agne's soul shrank away. She grew to resent her teacher. How dare she hold her back? How dare she keep knowledge from her? It was unforgivable.
Finally, after months of study and experimentation, Agne felt ready. She took Devon to a quiet place outside the city and traced a circle on her brother's brow. She soothed and murmured to him as she placed her hands on either side of his head.
She did not mean for it to happen. It was an accident. She never meant to hurt him. She loved him. She loved him. He was the only one she had.
His agonized cry cut her like a steely knife.
They banished her. Cast her out. She had performed an unforgivable sin. Agne remembered Jiao's angry, tearful eyes as they dragged her and Devon out of the city in shame.
And so she and her brother fled Xing: Lost, unwanted children ruined by war. The seeds of hatred took root in Agne's broken heart. She swore she would carry on. She vowed to remake herself. She would become a living weapon – as keen and deadly as a blade.
She would be Ashika.
Ishval lay quiet under the streaming moonlight. The beams fell over the rubble, casting shadows against the pavement. The glow had a cold clarity to it; it revealed a truth unseen by the noontime sun. The moonlight fell on two Ishvalan children huddled amongst the rubble.
Soft, keening wails dispelled the silence that once lay thick in the plaza. The cries spoke of loss and regret, loneliness and misery. As they rose, another voice joined it, lower, wordless, and garbled. Together they formed a heartbreaking melody. Though the rest of Ishval remained blanketed in a mantle of quiet, in this place the mournful cries of brother and sister cast the silence away.
A/N: So there it is. Now you know. Holy hand grenades, this was hard to write. I was/am/always will be terrified to publish this chapter for many, many reasons.
Stay with me, folks. There is a plan. It's all here: in my outline. It told me to write this, so I did.
And nothing else.
Thanks for the reviews and support! It means a lot!
Next Chapter: Clap
(Yes, we will find out what happens to Riza. But do you really want to know? :-O)